


we’re a team, aren’t we?

by maketea



Series: fictober 2019 [8]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Comfort, F/M, Fictober 2019, Love Confessions, Partial Identity Reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 23:07:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20956427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maketea/pseuds/maketea
Summary: who would’ve thought identities could make things so complicated?certainly not adrien.





	we’re a team, aren’t we?

**Author's Note:**

> fictober day 8: “can you stay?”

Adrien released his transformation as soon as he leapt through the window. He stood and stretched out his back, then turned to find Ladybug’s silhouette loitering by his windowsill.

“Patrol was nice,” he said, dropping his arms. “Thanks for coming back with me.”

When he asked her to join him, he didn’t expect her to say yes. Adrien didn’t have a fantastic idea about what she got up to on a Friday night, but he supposed it was much more interesting than dropping her partner back home.

“No problem. I’m just surprised we made it here so quick.” Then, nervously, she slid open her yo-yo, and the light shone against her chin. “In fact, I wanted to give you something.”

Reaching in, Ladybug brought out a box wrapped in a beige supermarket bag. She used her thumb to snap her yo-yo closed, and the room was dark again.

She handed the box to him. “So you don’t get hungry tonight.”

Last patrol, Chat Noir dragged Ladybug into a corner shop and bought a basketful of sour candies, muffins, and jellybeans. He filled his pockets with them, afterwards, complaining about how there was never anything to eat after he came back home. His chefs were dismissed by 8PM, and the kitchen fridge had nothing other than a few bottles of water and ingredients only the cooks were meant to touch. 

He told that story so Ladybug would scold him. Normally, she would have nagged at him for eating so unhealthily so late at night — something about a superhero needing to live off more than just sour candies and muffins and jellybeans. That night, she said nothing.

Adrien unwrapped the box, and behind the bag was a clear, plastic food container, up to the brim with chocolate cookies.

“You shouldn’t have!” he exclaimed, and cracked it open. He scooped up the first cookie he could get his hands on and took a large bite. “Almost as sweet as you, Bugaboo.”

“And that’s my cue to leave,” she said. “Don’t give yourself a stomach ache.”

Then her silhouette turned to the open window, placed a hand on the sill, and twisted around to reach for her yo-yo.

_ “Wait.” _

She did.

She stilled completely, fingers frozen enroute to the string around her waist, because Adrien had a firm grip on her wrist that he didn’t even remember grabbing.

He should have let go, by then, especially after she faced him, but the moonlight was on her cheekbones, and brow bone, and the ‘v’ of her Cupid’s bow, and Adrien blanked.

He was about to say something. Something worth listening to. Something that might have been a little more important than the way she looked with her lips parted and eyes wide and dark hair even darker with all the lights turned off.

“Can you stay?” he said, half-dazed. Adrien let go of her. “Y-you can help me finish these cookies.”

Ladybug glanced down at the opened food container, then back up at Adrien. She left her yo-yo be on her hip. “I guess a few more minutes couldn’t hurt.”

He smiled, then led her to his couch. She waited for him to sit down before she did, too, and maintained a breadth of distance between them. Adrien pretended not to notice, and filled the gap with the opened food container, instead.

“I feel like we haven’t done this in a while,” he said, and fumbled around for a cookie to give her in the dark. “You know, just spending time together.”

Perhaps she wouldn’t have thought that was true. 

Patrols were on as usual — five times a week, 5PM to 7PM on weekdays (except Fridays, which they generally stretched until ten), and 6PM to 8PM on weekends. They saw each other. They sat together. They walked side by side across streets, alleys, and boulevards, but Adrien couldn’t help but feel there was something different. 

For starters, Ladybug stopped laughing like she used to.

He saw her real laugh only a handful of times, because it had only been a handful of time ago when he’d finally gotten through to her, and she finally let herself come closer. She never threw her head back and laughed with him anymore. The most she did was giggle in a subdued, withdrawn way, and that itself was a rarity.

But Adrien doubted that Ladybug cared so much about the way she laughed with him.

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “I miss it.”

Or maybe she did.

She didn’t say anything else, only took a bite of her cookie and wiped the crumbs off her lips.

All it had taken was one accident. One akuma. One tiny utility closet they took cover in, one stupid mop bucket he tripped over, and one second of not paying attention for his ring to slip off his finger. He didn’t even realise until he opened his eyes to Plagg, and as he looked up, to Ladybug.

It hurt a bit — just a bit — that his identity was what threw everything out of balance.

“Can we talk?” he asked.

She looked up at him expectantly, a little hope in her eyes, and he realised, then, she had been waiting for him to bring it up.

It was hurting her just as much as him.

Adrien offered her another cookie, took a last one of his own, and closed the food container. “Everything feels… different.”

She looked down at her hands. “Yeah.”

It was his turn to say nothing, only sit in the thickening air around them. 

“I’m sorry,” she continued with a gust of breath. Her cookie lay unfinished on her lap. “I’m really sorry. I’ve just been thinking… a lot.”

“I get that.” And he really did. He’d done a fair amount of thinking on his own, but he knew perfectly well ‘alone’ and ‘thinking’ weren’t the perfect pair. “But we can’t just ignore it. It’s affecting… the way we fight.”

The way they fought. Yeah. It was a half-truth, at least according to the Ladyblog’s latest article. Theories about how Ladybug could have possibly given Chat Noir the wrong instructions, about how Chat Noir could have possibly catcalysmed the wrong thing were not the most reassuring things to read after a battle. They weren’t themselves, and everyone noticed.

But Adrien would be lying to himself if he said that was his biggest concern. Because it wasn’t. And Ladybug probably knew that, too.

She sighed deeply. “I’m sorry, Adrien. I just—just need to figure some stuff out.”

“We can talk about it,” he said.

She shook her head. “I-I can’t.”

He didn’t mean to pressure her, especially not now, not when she was knotting and unknotting her fingers and refusing to meet his eyes. Still, he couldn’t keep that intrusive tone out of his voice. “Why not?”

“Because it’s—” She clamped down on her bottom lip. “Because it’s complicated, okay?”

“All of this is complicated, My Lady. I’m fine with complicated.”

“Adrien…”

“I can’t afford to lose you.” His face burned, but he continued. “I’m so afraid we’re drifting apart. I don’t think I can handle that.”

She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. “No, I— I can’t afford to lose you, either.” She stopped, and rubbed her forehead. “I didn’t know… I didn’t know I was making you feel like that — that we were drifting apart, I mean.”

A bout of embarrassment took hold of Adrien, but above it was relief. She didn’t know, and there he had been on the verge of tears telling her how he thought he was about to lose her. 

“Well, it’s a little hard not to when we barely look at each other anymore,” he said.

“I know, I know.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “This is all my fault. I’m so sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologise. I just want you to talk to me.” He reached over the food container, over the gap she so carefully put between them, and placed his hand on top of hers. She flinched, but didn’t move it away. “We’re a team, aren’t we?”

Ladybug bit her lip. She was silent for a long time — completely still, too. He had a feeling that as long as he touched her she would sit paralysed like that, but he couldn’t bring it in himself to let go. Not when she could just whip out her yo-yo and disappear out of the open window. 

“I…” she said. “I’m in love with you.”

Like her, Adrien froze. “What?”

She jumped back into action, yanking her hands away from his and smacking them over her face. “I shouldn’t have told you that. Ignore me.”

“Ladybug.”

“I can’t hear you.”

“Ladybug.”

_ “Nooo.” _

“My Lady.” Adrien looked down at the food container, picked it up, and set it on the coffee table. He crossed the distance (it felt damn good) and touched her elbow tentatively. At that, she peeked through her fingers. “It’s just me. You don’t have to be nervous.”

“But that’s exactly my point.” She threw her hands down exasperatedly. “It’s you. I’ve been in love with you since the start of the year and I had no idea it was  _ you  _ behind that mask the entire time.”

She gave him a lot to unpack, there. First: Ladybug — out of the seven billion people in the world, the sixty-seven million people in France, the two million people in Paris — was in love with him. Second: Civilian Ladybug had been in love with civilian him since the beginning of the year. He set both aside for a time better suited to lie facedown on his pillow for six hours minimum.

“And I can’t handle it, because…” She gulped. “I know we can’t be together.”

“But—“ He flushed a little. “I love you, too.”

“I know, Adrien.” And for the first time that night, she looked at him. Really looked at him. Eye-to-eye, Ladybug gazed at him with such raw sorrow, he almost wanted her to turn away again. “But we’re superheroes.”

Superheroes.

That’s what she said when they were fresh on the scene, in the middle of their first month. He asked about her identity, and she handed him that word like it explained everything. 

That’s what she said on a balcony, surrounded by rose petals and candlelight and his unadulterated love hanging like perfume between them. He didn’t even need to confess, she had the word prepared for him on the tip of her tongue.

And she was saying it again, and it wasn’t much different. His stomach still sank like it always did.

“Who said superheroes couldn’t be together?” he pushed.

She smiled sadly. “Everything could go wrong.”

“ _ Could _ doesn’t mean  _ will _ .”

“Being a superhero is so important to me, Adrien. We can’t mess this up.”

“We won’t mess this up. I won’t let us mess this up. I—” He stopped as he got louder. The last thing he wanted was Nathalie walking in while he had Ladybug in his bedroom. “I understand if you don’t want to be together. I understood before. But… if you want to… if you  _ actually _ want to…” Adrien took a deep breath. “Why are you so afraid?”

Her shoulders sank. “I spent a year not being able to think straight whenever I saw you, and that—that can’t happen while I’m meant to be saving Paris.”

Reluctantly, he ignored the image of Ladybug blushing because of him (him!) for an entire year. He was at odds with all of this. Ladybug was in love with him. What were the odds of her civilian self falling for his? It was perfect: the fairytale ending he daydreamed about on the way to school.

But he usually dreamt of them ending up together. 

“Who said that’ll happen?” he asked. “We’re best friends. Doesn’t that make any of this easier?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that I’m in love with you, and I’m terrified.” She was shaking. Trembling from head to toe.

Adrien wrapped his arm around her shoulders. She fell against his chest easily, limp like a doll and shivering.

“I’m here, Ladybug,” he said on her hair. “Right here. Don’t be scared.”

He proffered his hand. She took it.

“I don’t know what to do,” she murmured. “I love you. But this is such a bad idea.”

“We don’t know that for sure.”

“We can’t afford to find out.”

For a moment, his embrace tightened. Then Adrien let go of her hand, took hold of her chin, and tilted her head up. The skin on her face was feverish.

“Can’t we?” he whispered.

They watched each other. Every blink, every twitch, every movement from their forehead to their lips.

Ladybug closed her eyes and leaned in.

And though Adrien didn’t know if this was only the beginning, or the beginning of the end, he found himself doing the same. 


End file.
